No. 7
Transfer and
Translation of
Policy1
University of Western
Australia
Diane Stone
Please cite this working paper as:
Stone, Diane (2011), ‘Transfer and Translation of Policy’,
GR:EEN Working Paper, No.7
www.greenfp7.eu/papers/workingpapers
Diane.Stone@uwa.edu.au 2
1
A revised version of this paper will appear in Policy Studies in 2012.
2
This paper acknowledges the support the University of Western Australia through its Winthrop
Chair, The AZSOG Institute of Governance in Canberra, and of the FP7 large-scale integrated
research project GR:EEN - Global Re-ordering: Evolution through European Networks. European
Commission Project Number: 266809.
1
Political Science and International Relations
University of Western Australia
1. Introduction
The starting point of this paper is in the field of policy studies. This is
to launch a discussion of ‘policy transfer’ and survey the literature looking
backwards to the political science diffusion literature, and forwards to the
expanding multi-disciplinary literatures on ‘learning’, ‘mobilities’ and
‘translation’.
Many studies cite Dolowitz and Marsh definition of policy transfer as a
process by which ‘knowledge about how policies, administrative
arrangements, institutions and ideas in one political setting (past or
present) is used in the development of policies, administrative
arrangements, institutions and ideas in another political setting’ (quoted in
Marsh & Sharman, 2008: 270). For example, AusAid’s (n.d.) Public Sector
Linkage Program seeks to “transfer capacity building skills and expertise to
their public sector counterpart institutions in partner countries”. Transfer
can take place across time, within countries and across countries although
it is unusual to observe straight-forward copying of legislation or direct
pinching of techniques. Instead intermediaries ‘mutate’ policy ideas in a
process of policy translation.
The paper is structured into two parts. The next section provides a
general overview of the varied literatures on ‘diffusion’, ‘transfer’,
‘convergence’ and ‘translation’ in the political science and international
relations literature. Despite the different terminology, each tradition points
to circumstances of ‘policy interdependence’ (Gilardi, 2012). The second
half of the paper focuses on the international domain of policy/knowledge
transfer processes. This brings to the fore the role of international
organisations and non-state actors in transnational transfer. Attention is
drawn to ‘soft’ forms of transfer – such as the spread of norms, standard
setting and development of professional communities or networks – as a
complement to the hard transfer of policy tools, structures and practices.
2. Translating the Field
“Over the past half century, political science journals have published
nearly 800 articles about the politics of public policies spreading from one
government to another” (Graham, Shipan & Volden, 2008: 1). Across the
sub-fields of political science, the terms policy diffusion, policy transfer and
policy convergence are often conflated. However, these terms point to
important to important differences in how change results in a policy
interdependent world (Gilardi, 2012).
2
Diffusion: Originally developed in the US as a means to explain the
adoption of policy and spread of diffusion throughout this federal system,
‘diffusion’ has been defined as “the process by which an innovation is
communicated through certain channels over time among members of a
social system” (Berry and Berry, 1999: 171). Diffusion describes a trend of
successive or sequential adoption of a practice, policy or programme.
The ‘diffusion’ literature suggests that policy is by osmosis; something
that is contagious rather than chosen. It connotes spreading or dispersion
of models or practices from a common source or point of origin. According
to Berry and Berry (2000: 172-78) diffusion patterns emerge from the
following dynamics:
1. National networks of communication between state
officials;
2. Geographical proximity of neighbour states that facilitates
sharing of innovations;
3. ‘Pioneer’ states lead the adoption of a policy that ‘laggard’
states eventually adopt;
4. A top-down influence for emulation from national
government advocating the state adoption of policy
innovation.
This perspective posits incremental changes in policy. Diffusion is not
inevitable. Some state architectures can be more porous to diffusion than
others (Berry & Berry, 1999: 179). This may result from numerous factors:
the presence or not of a professional network; resourcing issues and time
constraints in policy development; political sensitivities as well as an
individual or organisational disinclination to look elsewhere. Thus, many
examples of ‘best practice’ may exist and may be advocated inside and
outside a social system, but ignored.
In international relations (IR) approaches, diffusion occurs when
government policy decisions in a given country are systematically
conditioned by prior policy choices made in other countries. The ‘power of
global models’ – liberalism or democracy – is increasingly taken for
granted (Dobbin, Simmons and Garrett, 2007: 450). As Cao & Prakash
(2010: 113) note, ‘given policy interdependence, countries carefully watch
policies of their competitors to ensure that they are not disadvantaged due
to “bad” policies”. Trade competition generates incentives to conform to
voluntary standards such as ISO 900 detailed below.
A criticism of diffusion studies has been the lack of attention to how
policies or practices are altered during processes of adoption. By
identifying patterns of policy adoption, the approach has overlooked the
political interests involved in transfer. Policy is presumed to be contagious
rather than the end result of political interactions. Diffusion approaches
3
exhibit a fascination with the conditions for transfer rather than the content
of new policies. While national decision-making can be influenced by
diffusion, policy innovations elsewhere are not sufficient condition for
another jurisdiction to adopt the same policy. Factors that are internal to a
system such as the power dynamics of political interests and the sociohistorical make-up of a polity can be a more powerful determinant of what
is adopted more so than external factors.
The reader foraying into this field is more likely to encounter an
American trained scholar using the term and framework of ‘diffusion’
whereas Europeans often work with the term ‘transfer’. While the
approaches share many similarities, transfer studies tend to prioritize
rational knowledge utilization or ‘lesson-drawing’ from policy developed
elsewhere.
Transfer: Early policy transfer studies targeted the role of agency in
transfer processes and decision-making dynamics internal to political
systems. The logic of choice in selection of policy ideas, the interpretation
of circumstances or environment and (bounded) rationality in imitation,
copying and modification by decision makers were central to many
analyses. Titles of books and articles such as ‘lesson-drawing’ (Rose,
1993) and ‘systematically pinching ideas’ (Schneider & Ingram, 1988)
convey the notion that transfer is a voluntary process undertaken by civil
servants and politicians seeking to emulate ‘best practice’. This benign
view emerged from a bias in the early literature to look at transfers
primarily between advanced liberal democracies of OECD states.
Nevertheless, there was relatively quick recognition that transfers can be
more or less coercive.
Agent centred approaches do not dismiss structural forces but
suggest that in varying degree, states and organisations can mediate these
dynamics. Thus, path dependencies may be overcome. Convergence is
not necessarily an outcome of policy transfer, especially when negative
lessons are drawn from experience elsewhere and contribute to
divergence. What the policy transfer literature also allows us to see is the
possibilities for convergence around broad policy objectives and principles
but scope for divergence with regard to the instruments adopted, type of
legislation or institutional modes of policy control/delivery. In short, there
are different (but overlapping) modalities of transfer:
First, transfer can occur at the broad level of transferring policy ideals
or goals. Here the focus is on achieving a common outcome such as the
targets of the Millennium Development Goals or public health objectives to
reduce the number of smokers (Cairney, 2009). The route by which
polities seek such objectives can differ dramatically.
4
Second, there can be the transfer of institutions. This is the most
familiar understanding of policy transfer. It involves the creation of similar
structures such as the adoption of similar constitutional apparatus or the
transfer of pensions or higher education systems.
Third, regulatory, administrative or judicial tools can be transferred.
The classic examples are the spread and adoption of Freedom of
Information Law and the Ombudsman’s office. Closer to home, Australian
urban transport policies have been spread primarily by policy professionals
communicating cross-federally and international consultants mostly from
the US (Bray et al, 2011: 53), while Australia was the first country in the
world to institute a broadly based income-contingent charging system for
higher education. And its system much studied by other countries
(Chapman & Greenaway, 2008: 1066).
The fourth dimension is the ‘transfer of ideas and ideologies’. A broad
category, such transfers are difficult to map but are intuitively known. It is
distinguishable from the first modality in that ideas and ideologies are
inputs to policy development rather than outcomes. For example, the
spread of the New Right agenda during the 1980s and 1990s; the
movement of NPM ideas around the world (Pal & Ireland, 2009); the
economic reform precepts of the (post) Washington Consensus or the
‘Open Society’ values.
Fifth, the ‘transfer of personnel’ is apparent with short term staff
exchange and longer term movements of foreign students. Transfers of
ideas and practices also occurs via international task-forces and
commissions; fact finding missions and ‘eminent persons’ groups.
Consultants, ‘parachute professors’ and international (visiting) experts
provide opportunity to see and hear about overseas experiences.
It is also possible to learn from more than one jurisdiction at a time,
and to take away a multiplicity of lessons. It results in selective borrowing
that leads to hybrids and adaptive innovation to make policy development
better fit local conditions (see translation below). A further dynamic of
interpretation occurs when shifting analytical gaze from the official domain
of policy-making that puts politicians and civil servants as the central
transmitters and key determinants of transfer to address the wider universe
of translators. The state-centric view is reflected in the notion of ‘peer-topeer review’:
“… the systematic examination and assessment of the
performance of a State by other States with the ultimate goal
of helping the reviewed State improve its policy making,
adopt best practices, and comply with established standards
and principles” (Pal & Ireland, 2009: 650).
5
This state-centric view de-emphasises the transfer advocacy roles of
interest groups and NGOS, think tanks, consultant firms, law firms and
banks and other non-state actors. Likewise, international organisations and
transnational policy partnerships muddy policy transfer processes beyond
that of simple bilateral relationships between importing and exporting
jurisdictions to a more complex multilateral environment.
In sum, transfer has been depicted as ‘second generation’. The work
in the period 1980–2000 “identified many of the basic mechanisms through
which diffusion occurs – policy emulation, harmonization, lesson drawing”
where the first generation diffusion studies grappled with the pattern of the
phenomenon. In both, a criticism is that ‘‘what’’ is being diffused is
sometimes lost in the concern for ‘‘how’’ diffusion takes place (Howelett &
Rayner, 2008: 386).
Convergence:
In political economy, particularly in the newinstitutionalism framework, there has been stronger interest in explaining
why there has been convergence.
Scholarly thinking on ‘policy
convergence’ suggests that transfer is less the consequence of agency
and more the outcome of structural forces. That is, driven by
industrialisation, globalisation or regionalisation forcing a pattern of
increasing similarity in economic, social and political organisation between
countries. Where diffusion/transfer attends to the conscious spread of
policies and ideas between countries, convergence represents an
important counter-factual proposition that challenges the logic of choice.
The mimetic institutional iso-morphism of organisations is explained as
resulting from entrenched ‘path dependencies’ and the taken-for-granted
aspects of political life where actors follow rules, shared interpretations,
schema and meanings.
Many studies are drawn to the European Union (EU). Member and
candidate states converge around harmonizing policies: structural funds,
cohesion funds and the acquis communautaire.
The European
Commission is a vertical influence for compliance through directives and
regulations as well as joint progress on policy through the Open Method of
coordination (OMC).3 Candidate countries over the past decade emulated
3
The method to help Member States progress jointly in the reforms they needed to undertake in
order to reach the Lisbon goals included the following elements:


Fixing guidelines and timetables for achieving short, medium and longterm goals
Establishing quantitative and qualitative indicators and benchmarks,
tailored to the needs of Member States and sectors involved, as a means of
comparing best practices
6
many EU standards prior to accession, passing new laws, even when
implementation was beyond state capacity (Tews, 2009).
Analyses of convergence ‘diverge on whether the structural driving
force is economic or ideational, and whether states retain agency in the
face of globalization or are dominated by structural determinants’ (Drezner,
2001: 55). (Likewise, there are debates among policy transfer scholars
over structural or agency explanations). Studies of convergence are more
focused on policy and institutional outcomes (Levi-Faur and Jordan, 2009:
6). Consequently, the approach can be considered a different genus from
diffusion/transfer studies that start with inputs and processes of dispersion
(see Gilardi, 2012).
Translation: Divergence and hybridization, adaption and mutation
have increasingly been used in conjunction with the above concepts.
Consequently, the idea of policy ‘translation’ (Prince, 2009: 173) and
‘variation’ (Newburn, 2010) has gained traction. The notion reflects a
“move away from thinking of knowledge transfer as a form of technology
transfer or dissemination, rejecting if only by implication its mechanistic
assumptions and its model of linear messaging from A to B” (Freeman,
2009: 429). Translation is “a series of interesting, and sometimes even
surprising, disturbances can occur in the spaces between the ‘creation’,
the ‘transmission’ and the ‘interpretation’ or ‘reception’ of policy meanings”
(Lendvai & Stubbs, 2007: 175).
Various studies have criticized the rationalist underpinnings of early
transfer approaches and instead stress the complexity of context (inter alia,
Dwyer & Ellison, 2009; Newburn, 2009) and the need for interpretation or
experimentalism (Sabel & Zeitlin, 2011) in the assemblage of policy (Prince,
2009). Burgeoning studies of transfer or diffusion to developing states or
transition countries are notable for the way in which they query and contest
assumptions of undiluted dichotomous diffusion or unmediated ‘import’ of
transferred ideas (inter alia, Lendvai & Stubbs, 2007; Ngoasong, 2011;
Sissenich 2008; Tews, 2009). Even AusAid (n.d.) in ‘lessons learnt’ from its
‘Public Sector Linkage program stresses ‘empathy’, ‘local context’,
‘ownership’ at all levels of governance, ‘sustainable learning’, and
‘relationships’ rather than solely the content of technical knowledge.
One key explanation behind the translation of ideas, standards or
programmes is that mutation can result from prior processes of learning.


Translating European guidelines into national and regional policies, by
setting specific measures and targets
Periodic monitoring of the progress achieved in order to put in place
mutual learning processes between Member States
7
However, policy learning has been subject to numerous interpretations
(Chapman & Greenaway, 2008: 1061). A useful categorization has been
developed by Dupont and Radaelli (forthcoming 2012 or 2013) where
translation best accords with 1 and 3:
1. Reflexive learning. New knowledge from elsewhere is presumed
to influence the cognition of policy problems and their solutions,
potentially informing/de-stabilising the fundamental beliefs of
decision makers who thus become more attuned to opportunities
for transfer.
2. Epistemic communities: Networks of experts characterized by
consensual (usually scientific) knowledge. The expert is
authoritative in this ‘deficit model’ of learning where the expert has
“the ability to transfer policy by assuming control over knowledge
production and in doing so guiding decision-maker learning”
(Dunlop, 2009: 290) filling the gap in their understanding.
3. Bargaining and social interaction: A positive externality resulting
from on-going interactions, political competition and competition
that mean that participants come to better appreciate and
understand alternative policy routes. In transnational networks,
learning (even if uneven or imperfect) helps promote an
‘international policy culture’ or commonly accepted norms.
4. Shadow of hierarchy: When reflexivity is constrained and
bargaining limited by strong hierarchical mechanisms, institutions
exert strong pressures to learn. That is, they provide the ‘rules of
the game’ (of rational choice institutionalism) but also the codes,
identities and norms that generate logics of appropriateness
asserted by sociological institutionalism.
Policy learning may result in a more coherent transfer of ideas, policies
and practices. Yet, as Dupont (2009: 307) notes, “policy learning is not
synonymous with policy adoption; decision-makers can learn ‘negative
lessons’ where learning from the ideas that are diffused help crystallize
what ideas and policy paths they do not wish to follow”.
Poor, incomplete or partial transplantation is not as well documented
as the ‘success stories’ of transfer. Indiscriminate transfer can mean
copying mistakes when over-committed policymakers have responded to
complexity and crisis by unreflectively cutting and pasting from foreign
models” in a form of “policy plagiarism” (Sharman, 2010: 623-5). Transfer
failure also points to dynamics of difference and divergence (Newburn,
2010: 350). Often policies and practices are simply not ‘transferable’ since
they have grown out of the legal, educational and social systems of their
host state” (Hulme, 2005: 423) and are neither ideologically nor culturally
proximate.
The ‘indigenization’ of policy occurs over the long term as well as
from the point of adoption. Even if there are cases of linear transmission of
8
a policy from one jurisdiction to another, the transfer does not create a
cryogenically preserved policy forever more. At some point, the policy
transfer process ends and endogenous forces of mutation take over. Local
ownership becomes more pronounced. Logics of appropriateness entail a
gradual adjustment and modifications that lead to different outcomes than
may have originally been envisaged. Existing policy processes and sociocultural conditions alter imported ideas. This can be seen in receptivity to,
and application of the public health thinking behind controlling ‘smoking’:
Tobacco control is not an ‘irresistible movement’. While tobacco
control was an ‘idea whose time has come’ there were important
variations in the extent to which it affected different locales.
Indeterminacy also existed in member states and, in the case of
the UK, within the member state. This is demonstrated by the
variable adoption of smoking in public places bans in the UK
since devolution (Cairney, 2009: 472).
The process of adopting simple ideas is remarkably complex and requires
considered analysis of the political context in which the idea was
articulated, injected and accepted. Rather than states acting rationally in
the adoption of tobacco control solutions, the mosaic of approaches is
reflective more so of an indeterminate and chaotic set of policy processes
where proponents of ‘solutions’ need to wait for a ‘window of opportunity’
and politically conducive circumstances to introduce and implement such
solutions.
This stance towards the transfer of ideas moves the analytical focus
from an ‘idea whose time has come’ to consideration of the conditions that
need to be generated before policy change occurs. That is, a shift from the
idea as the main source of explanation, one inevitably propelling change,
to an explanatory position that highlights uncertainty, where the
acceptance of the idea is more politically relevant than the idea itself. It is
the ‘garbage can’ idea of the policy process. In other words, for ‘norm
brokers’ to be effective there must also be ‘norm takers’ (Acharya, 2004). A
similar point is made that ‘law taking’ (such as under EU conditionality) is
inevitably circumscribed by local processes of ‘policy making’ (Tews, 2009).
Of late, this theme has been picked up by political geographers stressing
mutation during idea mobility (Peck, 2011). Likewise, ‘experimentalist
governance architectures’ have emerged as a response to “turbulent,
polyarchic environments, where strategic uncertainty means that effective
solutions to problems can only be defined in the course of pursuing them,
while a multi-polar distribution of power means that no single actor can
impose her own preferred solution without taking into account the views of
others” (Sabel & Zeitlan, 2011: 2).
Reprise: The literature has diversified. Once primarily the focus on
public policy/administration scholars and comparative political scientists,
today it is a multi-disciplinary field: One that is replete with conflicting
9
jargon and competing conceptual categories. The American dominated
international relations literature tends towards ‘diffusion’ approaches
whereas (international) political economy approaches show a fascination
with convergence and path dependencies under the different varieties of
capitalism. Business studies, sociology and law have all taken distinct
trajectories. As would be expected, political geographers focus on policy
spaces, where transference of policies, or flows, “dynamically reconstitute
the terrains across which they travel, at the same time as being embedded
in, if not products of, extralocal regimes and circuits” (Peck, 2011: 21; also
Prince, 2009).
Another route of diversification in the literature is the manner in which
transfer studies have become better embedded in the conceptual literature.
As the symposium convenors note: “policy transfer analysis alone cannot
provide a general explanatory theory of policy change but when combined
with other approaches an empirically grounded account of policy change
can be developed.” For instance, there are now a couple of studies that
connect the policy transfer idea with the organized anarchies literature of
‘garbage cans’ (inter alia, Cairney, 2009). Others suggest that transfer is a
more incremental and indiscriminate process where policy makers “nicked
stuff from all over the place” (Dwyer and Ellison, 2009).
Epistemic
communities have long been regarded as transfer mechanisms (Dunlop,
2009; Hulme, 2005). Emerging studies on compliance go to the final stage
of implementation to address citizen non-compliance, policy deviation and
violations (Weaver, 2009). Rather than transfer studies being regarded as
a distinct approach, it becomes just one mode of ‘evidence based policy’ or
as symptomatic of wider ‘policy interdependencies’.
Neo-Gramscians are likely to see policy transfer as bound by power,
symptomatic of the spread of neo-liberal hegemonic practices via
knowledge networks (Parmar, 2002). Constructivist approaches emphasise
need for ‘socialisation’ and development of ‘inter-subjective
understandings’ (Acharya, 2004; Greenhill, 2010). Post-modernist
renditions of policy translation go further to emphasise meaning-making in
contextually bound conditions of uncertainty and chaos (Peck, 2009).
A limitation of this paper is that it cannot address with due justice
issues of method (but see Howlett & Rayner, 2008; Gilardi, 2012). As has
been well explained, the diffusion approach has tended to do large ‘n’
analyses whereas the transfer literature more often undertakes qualitative
case studies (Marsh & Sharman, 2009) and translation approaches
advocate ethnographic accounts of policy change (Lendvai & Stubbs,
2007). The causal nexus between transferred policy ideas and their
adoption is not clear and transparent. There are many intervening
variables. Notwithstanding considerable methodological problems, social
network analysis (SNA) has made great strides in mapping the diffusion of
10
innovations (for applications to policy see Gilardi, 2012; Sissenich, 2008).
Also emerging from sociology (specifically the work of Bruno Latour and
Michel Callon), albeit with significantly different epistemological
foundations, actor network theory (ANT) has been concerned with scientific
and technological (ex)change. In both ANT and SNA: “Translation is ‘nway’, not one-way” where multiple iterations by multiple actors erode the
distinction between source and target (Freeman, 2009: 441).
Most studies have concentrated on policy transfers between nationstates. Such approaches suffer from ‘methodological nationalism’ – a focus
on dynamics within the nation-state and comparison of sovereign units.
The policy transfer metaphor implies a direct exchange process between
exporting and importing countries with an implicit tendency to assume a
bilateral relationship. Importantly, transfer can also be facilitated by
organisations outside and between the state.
Policy transfer and
translation is just as likely to be achieved by mechanisms embedded in
markets and networks as in the hierarchies of the state.
3. International Policy Intermediaries
This section is structured into two parts. The first will address will
focus on the official domain looking at the role of international
organisations in transfer processes between states. As noted by Dunlop
and Radaelli (2012), many “international organisations reveal strong
normative assumptions about how governments should learn” (also Pal &
Ireland, 2009). They have launched different instruments for cross-national
and trans-national learning, such as benchmarking, peer review,
checklists, and ‘facilitated coordination’. The second section will look to
the plethora of non-state actors on the global landscapes seeking to
spread best practice or institute standard setting initiatives. For instance,
the role of business in standards setting is well established. In the field of
environmental governance, especially Europe, both green and business
interest groups have played prominent roles in the advocacy and
dissemination of voluntary agreements, ecolabels or certification.
The policy translation approach is particularly amenable to
addressing the universe of international actors. Firstly, whatever the
assumptions of command and control presumed to rest with intergovernmental organisations, they remain dependent on ‘client’ states for
implementation. In the main, their powers and capacity to impose
sanctions are limited. Persuasion is in many instances the main tool of
transfer. Secondly, inter-governmental organisations operate between
states, sometimes above states. This intermediary status is also a locus for
percolation, recombination and reinvention of ideas as well as gestation
and rejuvenation of ‘international policy cultures’. In the dialogues,
11
conferences and negotiations that occur within and among international
organisations further sets of translations take place where policy meanings
are distorted, transformed and modified (Lendvai & Stubbs, 2007: 176).
Thirdly, as will become apparent, there is considerable overlap and joint
enterprise between states, international organisations and relevant nonstate bodies. Translation occurs in a complex web. Not only do these
collective processes of policy transfer or diffusion create new cycles and
circuits of interpretation, it also contributes to new architectures of
transnational governance. Translation and meaning-making is the very
workings of power.
International Organisation: The structural adjustment policies of the
World Bank and International Monetary Fund have long been criticised as
coercive form of economic reform measures. Conditionality and economic
sanctions are a blunt instrument often regarded as ineffective and/or
having perverse outcomes (Tews, 2009). Coercion is not the only (or even
favoured) approach of international organisations to promote ‘best practice’
or adherence to international standards. Institutions such as the World
Bank, WTO and IMF have set up research departments or hold
conferences and consultations to advocate the ‘scientific’ validity of their
objectives, and have engaged in various outreach activities, data gathering
and monitoring to promote compliance.
Such long term persuasion exercises can be depicted as ‘indirect
coercion’ inducting client state elites into neo-liberal values of the post
Washington consensus. The Inter-American Development Bank and the
World Bank were closely entangled in the development of conditional cash
transfer programs through closed transnational policy networks with
‘borrower governments’ (Teichmann, 2007). Similarly, the IMF training
institutes provide courses for developing country policy elites, mostly
economists. For example, the ‘Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the
Financing of Terrorism (AML)’ course will be delivered in 4 countries over a
9 month period in 2011-12. Other courses are ‘recycled’ around regional
training centers. Even so, the ‘invited participants’ are not empty cyphers.
They will imbibe the ideas and technical information differentially on
spectrum from resistance/rejection through to acceptance and adaption.
Other international organisations like the OECD seek to develop
common policy responses in specific fields. Collectively, policy transfers of
this nature represent a mode of transnational regulation. For instance, the
OECD has carved out a growing niche for itself as a resource bank for
comparative data, analysis and forecasts so that governments can: (a)
compare policy experiences; (b) seek answers to common problems; (c)
identify good practice; (d) co-ordinate policies. More generally, the OECD
has been depicted as a ‘Conduit of public management thinking’ and
practice. Amongst many dozens of standards, the OECD has instituted:
12
 OECD best practices for budget transparency
 OECD Best Practice Guidelines for Biological Resource Centres
 OECD Principles of Corporate Governance
 OECD Guidelines for Quality Assurance in Genetic Testing
These dialogues and ‘guidelines’ create explicit standards of regulatory
quality and become a mechanism of ‘multilateral surveillance’. More
generally, international organisations operate as venues for socialisation of
policy elites (Greenhill, 2009).
Global Policy partnerships: International regimes – a set of similar
norms and principles, rules and decision-making procedures around which
actor expectations converge – can also lead to harmonisation. Global
health partnerships such as Roll Back Malaria and the Global Fund HIVAIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis, for example, are multilateral initiatives to
co-ordinate responses to pandemics. These partherships align health
policy with development policy to create national disease programmes in
which non-state actors have become key players in collective decisionmaking. An area rich in application of policy transfer ideas, much literature
increasingly points to both the successes of international coordination and
consensus building but also to the governance challenges of
implementation at national and local levels (inter alia, Ngoasong, 2010;
Moran, 2010).
Global policy partnerships are proliferating. The World Bank via its
Development Grant Facility convenes a variety of what it calls ‘global
programs’:
 Global Animal Health Initiative
 Global Donor Platform for Rural Development
 Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery
 Global Financial Management Initiative
 Global Forum for Health Research
 Global Program on Fisheries (PROFISH)
 Global Road Safety Facility
These half dozen or so global programs are among 50-odd other initiatives
of international standard setting at the Bank (such as Profish’s aim to
implement the Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries) and can be
ranged alongside the many partnerships sponsored by the United Nations
or by other international organisations.
Whether it be individual organisations like the development banks or
the more complex policy partnerships and multinational initiatives, policy
ideas are mutated and transformed in these organizations and network
venues. A process of translation has taken place even before policy is
‘imposed’ on, or then interpreted by, client countries.
Policies are not … merely being transferred over space; their
form and their effects are transformed by these journeys, which
13
also serve to remake relational connections across an intensely
variegated and dynamic social-institutional landscape (Peck,
2011: 21).
This performative and constantly interpretative and experimental process
creates new policy spaces of soft law and governance networks in the
transnational domain.
Soft Law and Private Regulatory Standards: For instance, the
Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) is a validation process
for transparency of revenues from the oil, gas and mining industries.
Likewise, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) arose from debates over
corporate social responsibility to become a set of guidelines for companies
producing voluntarily sustainability reports.
ISO 9000 is a quality
certification standard that has been sponsored by the International
Organization for Standardization, a non-governmental organisation. It is
the most widely adopted quality standard world-wide. Launched in 1987,
over 700,000 facilities in 164 countries have received ISO 9000
certification (Cao & Prakash, 2010: 111). It is one of many voluntary
certification standards designed to ameliorate information asymmetries for
consumers concerned about labour practices, organic content in food
items or the use of child labour in goods they purchase. Such standards
have become an important mechanism of private or voluntary regulation
requiring signatory organisations to adopt specific management strategies.
While they lack the ‘de jure’ authority of states and international
organisations, there are indications in many cases of compliance even
though it may be partial and patchy among candidates.
Non-State Actors and Evidence Transmission: The transmission of
policy ideas, experts and programmes from non-state bodies is extensive.
As noted earlier, “a problem of terminology arises: ‘Policy transfer’ directs
analytical gaze towards the state when it may be that ideas, behaviours,
perceptions and discourses which are transported and adapted
irrespective of state structures” (Stone, 2004: 556). Think tanks, business
coalitions, universities, philanthropic foundations and NGOS are ‘policy
transfer entrepreneurs’ facilitating exchanges between actors in several
countries, often operating via transnational networks. They are better at the
‘soft transfer’ of broad policy ideas; the intellectual matter that underpins
policies. They use their intellectual authority or market expertise to
reinforce and legitimate certain forms of policy or normative standards as
‘best practice’. Conversely, officials are more involved in ‘hard’ transfer of
policy practices and instruments involving executive decisions, legislation
and regulation.
Three examples below detail some of the essential support services
for decision-makers undertaken by non-state bodies (i) acting as financiers
for the spread and articulation of policy ideas; (ii) as resource banks,
14
researchers and advocates of policy ideas, and (iii) as coalition builders
and network convenors. While not traditionally understood as ‘international
organisations’, nevertheless, these actors have become embedded in the
evolving structures of transnational governance and have been variously
labeled as ‘norm entrepreneurs’ or ‘idea brokers’.
Philanthropic foundations are usually regarded as civil society
organisations of which relatively few operate across borders in their
funding activities. Nevertheless, the international programs of the American
foundations have been especially important in the diffusion of American
style norms and procedures to other countries in the guise of ‘liberal
internationalism’ (Parmar, 2002). For instance, during the 1970s the Ford
Foundation was a catalyst for the dissemination of human rights norms (via
support to activist groups, research grants to local academics and other
forms of dissident support) to Latin America (Moran, 2010: 32). Likewise,
the Soros funded Open Societies Foundations (OSF) network promotes
human rights and civil liberties by introducing programmes developed in
the West into countries of the former Soviet Union, Central and Eastern
Europe.
Foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ford
Foundation and the Aga Khan Foundation provide funding and resources
to many of the multilateral initiatives mentioned above. Rockefeller and
Gates have been key instigators of various ‘global health partnerships’. For
instance, Gates played a key agenda-setting and donor role in the launch
of GAVI – a global health partnership (Moran, 2010, ch. 4). Not only is
there alignment on child immunisation targets and implementation
procedures from country to developing country via GAVI, the partnership
model itself represents a form of convergence with current consensus in
the development community on one of the most effective and appropriate
institutional mechanisms of development assistance.
Think Tanks first emerged in Anglo-American liberal democracies as
independent policy analytic bodies outside government. They become
organisational template for transfer to developing and transition countries
as part of overseas development assistance to support civil society. Yet,
developing countries with weak bureaucracies or experiencing state failure,
or (semi-) authoritarian systems distort the manner in which such
transplanted organizations operate. Launched by IDRC, the William and
Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2008,
the Think Tank Initiative 4 is symptomatic not only of the transfer of
management protocols for think tanks and the transfer of principles of
evidence based policy research, but implicitly, a vehicle for the promotion
of western democratic values. This initiative now exists alongside other
think tank schemes such as the Global Development Network (GDN)
4
http://www.idrc.ca/thinktank
15
launched by the World Bank and various regional initiatives such as the
OSF supported PASOS. Collectively, they help sustain nationally based
institutes but induct their fellows in ‘international standards’ of research,
and provide opportunity for their incorporation into transnational policy
forums and networks.
The think tank model has been an object of transfer. It is also a wellknown mechanism of transfer. There are too many think tank studies to
recount that have looked at experience elsewhere and sought to adapt
ideas to local context. Lesson-drawing is part of the modus operandi of a
think tank (see Stone, 2004; Newburn, 2010). Similarly, some think tanks
have ‘exported’ their analysis sometimes operating in a fashion not
dissimilar to consultancy firms. Indeed, if a business studies scholar were
to be writing this paper they are more likely to focus on the role of
consultancy firms in knowledge transfer (Sturdy et al, 200x). However,
rather than simply looking at organizational mechanisms for transfer, the
interactions of professionals from various backgrounds constitutes another
mode of transfer in transnational domains.
Professional and policy networks also facilitate the negotiation and
settlement of global standards through regular interaction of experts and
professionals via international conferences and sustained ecommunication. An “international policy culture” develops as policy
communities share their expertise, information and form common patterns
of understanding regarding policy (Teichman, 2007: 558). It is an intangible
or ‘soft’ form of policy transfer of knowledge and norms to create a “new
common-sense” (Newburn 2010). Prior to the establishment of both the
EITI and GRI was the involvement of advocacy networks raising
awareness of problems and softening public opinion. Networks are
portrayed somewhat stereotypically as fluid entities that allow actors to
interact freely. Yet, governments (and international organisations) have an
interest in controlling them (Sissenich, 2008).
The World Economic Forum calls itself an “independent international
organization” and it is one that is networked extensively through its
‘communities’ and ‘partners’. By creating high status forums for sustained
communication among policy elites, corporate leaders and entrepreneurial
academics (such as through specific initiatives likes its Risk Response
Network or Global University Leaders Forum), potentially a similarity of
perspectives on the shape of “responsible capitalism” develops. It is,
however, a long term strategy and one muddied with many other agendas
than simply seeking a convergence of global elite views. Such an ambition
(and one by no means limited to WEF) testifies to faith in the
transformative power of ideas when they are spread. Ideas can also be
counter-hegemonic. For instance, the Rose and Orange Revolutions of
16
Georgia and Ukraine were denounced by Putin as instigated by foreign
pro-democracy groups bank-rolled by western foundations.
It is intuitively easy to understand the ‘soft’ transfer of ideas and
information via networks whether they be personal, professional or
electronic. It is rather more infrequent to see such ideas structure thinking
and become institutionalized. Few policy ideas capture the political
imagination; most fall fallow. Knowledge transfer may be more extensive
than policy transfer. The non-governmental status of non-state actors and
their networks is a major structural constraint to policy transfer.
Accordingly, these organisations are often to be found in partnership or
(temporary) coalition with governments and international organisations.
Such partnerships or networks can be thought of as ‘interpretative
communities’ (Acharya, 2004) engaged in a continuous process of
translation and modification (Freeman, 2009) resulting in various forms of
‘experimentalist governance’. Thus, foundations, or networks or
international organisations are not independent and autonomous actors
transmitting policy knowledge or ‘evidence’ into a vacuum. Instead, their
collective interactions constitute structures of policy translation (Lendvai &
Stubbs, 2007).
In taking this approach, this paper is guilty of the problem identified
earlier that the ‘‘what’’ is being diffused is lost in the concern for ‘‘how’’
diffusion takes place. The processes of assemblage, the mix of ideas and
interplay of interests becomes more interesting. Assemblage in the
translation work undertaken by international organisations does not simply
lead to multiple translations of possible policy approaches. In focusing on
how it is done in these venues, and who or what creates and convenes
these venues, new architectures (even if somewhat shaky or impermanent)
are constructed. In conjunction with other dynamics, policy
transfer/translation has the unintended consequence of fuelling
transnational governance and giving shape and substance to new policy
spaces.
Conclusion: Transnational Governance ‘Transference’ or ‘Lost in
Translation’
Policy transfer not only takes place in international domains but can
also be considered one constitutive element of transnational governance.
This is not to deny the continuing power and impact of nation-states. The
domestic politics of nation states will continue to ensure difference and
diversity. Yet, if it is the case that international policy transfer is an
extensive phenomenon, then it can be said that important forces behind
policy change, innovation and reform originate from outside the state. This
is a significant challenge to traditional understanding of sovereignty
17
whereby policy transfer and translation becomes a transnational steering
process. The policy transfer framework undermines the temptation to view
the forces behind policy change arising only in a domestic context and
instead posits transfer and translation as another or substratum of
governmentality.
Even so, domestically based translators choose between alternatives.
It is a collaborative performance in the co-evolution of policy. This
approach to policy transfer has a strong acknowledgement of uncertainty,
puts ‘practice’ at center and recognizes complexity that undermines simple
linear –evidence-based’ notions of transferred policy. “It follows that the
translator’s first task maybe to identify not (or not only) the knowledge that
is to be transferred (authors amendment), but the uncertainty that
surrounds it” (Freeman, 2009: 440).
In what has been a very broad brush survey of the policy
convergence, diffusion, transfer and translation schools of analysis, it has
been very much the case ‘divided we write’ in the subfields of political
science (Graham, Shipan & Volden, 2008). By and large, the ‘diffusion of
policy diffusion research” is more prevalent than the adoption of the
language of ‘transfer’. Both, however, have been caricatured as ‘rationalformalist’ and ‘rooted in orthodox political science’ (Peck, 2011: 1) overlooking social-constructivist work on translation and interpretative
communities.
18
References
AusAID,
Public
Sector
Linkages
Program:
http://www.ausaid.gov.au/business/other_opps/pslp.cfm
Berry, Frances Stokes. and Berry, William. D. (1999) ‘Innovation and diffusion
models in policy research’, in Paul A. Sabatier. (ed) Theories of the
Policy Process, Boulder CO., Westview Press.
Bray, et al (2011) ‘Transport policy in Australia—Evolution, learning and policy
transfer’, Transport Policy, 18: 522-32.
Cao, Xun and Prakash, Aseem. (2010) ‘Growing Exports by Signaling Product
Quality: Trade Competition and the Cross-National Diffusion of ISO
9000 Quality Standards’, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management,
Vol. 30, No. 1, 111–135.
Cairney, Paul. (2009) ‘The role of ideas in policy transfer: the case of UK
smoking bans since devolution’, Journal of European Public Policy, 16:
3, 471 — 488.
Chapman, B & Greenaway, D. (2006), 'Learning to Live With Loans?
International Policy Transfer and the Funding of Higher Education', The
World Economy, 29(8): 1057-1075.
Dobbin, Frank., Simmons, Beth. and Garrett, Geoffrey. (2007) ‘The Global
Diffusion of Public Policies: Social Construction, Coercion, Competition,
or Learning’, Annual Review of Sociology, 33: 449–472
Drezner, Daniel. W. (2001) ‘Globalization and Policy Convergence’,
International Studies Review,
Dunlop, Claire A.(2009) 'Policy transfer as learning: capturing variation in what
decision-makers learn from epistemic communities', Policy Studies, 30:
3, 289 — 311
Dwyer, Peter. and Ellison, Nick. (2009) ‘‘We nicked stuff from all over the
place’: policy transfer or muddling through?’ Policy & Politics 37(3):
389-407
Freeman, Richard. (2009) ‘What is Tranlsation?’ Evidence & Policy: A Journal
of Research, Debate and Practice, 5(4): 429-447(19)
Gilardi, Fabrizio. (2012 forthcoming) ‘Policy interdependence: transfer,
diffusion, convergence’, in Engeli, Isabelle and Christine Rothmayr
(eds), Comparative Policy Studies. Conceptual and Methodological
Challenges, Palgrave Macmillan.
Greenhill, Brian. (2010) “The Company You Keep: International Socialisation
and the Diffusion of Human Rights Norms’, International Studies
Quarterly, 54: 127-45
Howlett, Michael. & Rayner, Jeremy (2008) ‘Third Generation Policy Diffusion
Studies and the Analysis of Policy Mixes: Two Steps Forward and One
Step Back? Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and
Practice 10, (4): 385-402
Hulme, Rob. (2005) ‘Policy Transfer and the Internationalisation of Social
Policy’ Social Policy & Society, 4(4): 417–425.
Jordana, Jacint, Levi-Faur, David and Fernandez Marin, Xavier, (2009) The
Global Diffusion of Regulatory Agencies (December 1, 2009). IBEI
Working Papers 2009/28.
Lendvai, N., and Stubbs. P. (2007) "Policies as translation: situating
transnational social policies." S. Hodgson and Z. Irving (eds.) Policy
Reconsidered: Meanings, Politics and Practices. Policy Press.
Marsh, David & Sharman, J. C. (2009) ‘Policy diffusion and policy transfer’,
Policy Studies, 30(3): 269-88.
Moran, Michael. (2010) Philanthropic Foundations and Public-Private
Partnerships: Philanthropy, Collaboration and Private Influence in
Global Governance, PhD. Thesis, Melbourne University.
Newburn, Tim. (2010) ‘Diffusion, differentiation and resistance in comparative
penality’, Criminology and criminal justice, 10 (4): 341-353.
Ngoasong, Michael Zisuh. (2011) ‘Transcalar networks for policy transfer and
implementation: the case of global health policies for malaria and
HIV/AIDS in Cameroon’, Health Policy and Planning, 26: 63–72.
Pal, Leslie. and Ireland, Derek. (2009) ‘The public sector reform movement:
Mapping the global policy network’, International Journal of Public
Administration 32: 621-57.
Parmar, Inderjeet. (2002) "American Foundations and the Development of
International Knowledge Networks." Global Networks 2(1): 13-30.
Peck, Jamie. (2011) ‘Geographies of Policy: from transfer-diffusion to mobilitymutation’, Progress in Human Geography, 1-25.
Prince, Russell. (2009) ‘Policy transfer as policy assemblage: making policy
for the creative industries in New Zealand’, Environment and Planning
A., 42: 169—86.
Rose, Richard. (1993) Lesson Drawing in Public Policy: A Guide to Learning
Across Time and Space, Chatham, N.J., Chatham House.
Schneider, Anne. & Ingram, Helen. (1988) ‘Systematically Pinching Ideas: A
Comparative Approach to Policy Design’, Journal of Public Policy, 8(1):
61-80.
Sharman, J. C. (2010) ‘Dysfunctional Policy Transfer in National Tax
Blacklists’, Governance: An International Journal of Policy,
Administration, and Institutions, 23(4): 623–639)
Sissenich, Beate. (2008) ‘Cross-National Policy Networks and the State: EU
Social Policy Transfer to Hungary and Poland’, European Journal of
International Relations, 14(3): 455–487.
Stone, Diane. (2004) ‘Transfer Agents and Global Networks in the
‘Transnationalisation’ of Policy’, Journal of European Public Policy,
11(3): 545-66
Sturdy, A., Handley, K., Clark, t. and Fincham, R. (2008) ‘Rethinking the role
of management consultants in knowledge as disseminators of business
knowledge’, in Harry Scarborough (ed) The Evolution of Business
Knowledge, Oxford University Press.
Teichman, Judith. (2007) ‘Multilateral lending institutions and transnational
policy networks in Mexico and Chile’ Global Governance, 13: 557-73.
Tews, Kerstin. (2009)
“From Law-Taking to Policy-Making: The
Environmental Dimension of the EU Accession Process – Challenges,
Risks and Chances for the SEE Countries”, Environmental Policy and
Governance, 19: 130–139.
Weaver, R. Kent. (2009) ‘Target Compliance: The Final Frontier of
Implementation”, Brookings Issues in Governance Studies, No 27.,
September.
20
Zeitlan, J. & Sabel, C. (2011) “Experimentalism in Transnational Governance:
Emergent Pathways and Diffusion Mechanisms”, panel on “Global
Governance in Transition”, annual conference of the International
Studies Association, Montreal, March 16-19.
21